FaberBooks

Recovering the past, from forgetting and suppression, is a central theme of both books by authors featured in the third Faber Podcast. In the Booker-shortlisted and Costa Book of the Year-winning The Secret Scripture Sebastian Barry tries to make sense of Ireland's past through Roseanne McNulty, whilst in The Story of Forgetting Stefan Merrill Block weaves a genetic history of early-onset Alzheime...

The 2008 Costa Book of the Year, The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry is a story of a life blighted by ignorance and terrible mistreatment, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope. In this extended interview, Sebastian Barry speaks about the many histories of Ireland and, even closer to home, remnants of his own family history to be found in The Secret Scripture in the fictional shape...

Inspired partly by the author’s own family history, The Story of Forgetting is a heartbreaking and inspiring debut novel from American author Stefan Merrill Block. We spoke to him on his visit to the UK in 2008. His new novel The Storm at the Door is published in July 2011.

In the second Faber Podcast we speak to Adam Mars-Jones about the long-anticipated Pilcrow; biographer Frances Wilson tells us more about the poet's wife, Dorothy Wordsworth; and double Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey, on a visit from New York, drops in to tell us more about Australia and counterculture in His Illegal Self.

His Illegal Self is the story of Che - raised in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother, he is the precocious son of radical student activists at Harvard in the late sixties. Yearning for his famous outlaw parents, denied all access to television and the news, he takes hope from his long-haired, teenage neighbour who predicts: They will come for you, man. They’ll break you out of here ......

Pilcrow is a wonderful coming-of-age story from an acclaimed literary author, which features one of the most unusual heroes depicted in modern fiction. Adam Mars-Jones describes him in all his glory in this interview recorded in April 2008. The second book in the series, Cedilla, was published in January 2011.

Recorded in April 2008, an interview with author Frances Wilson in which she told us more about The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, her hugely powerful and revealing biography of the great English poet's beloved sister, champion and muse.

In the first Faber Podcast Richard T. Kelly discusses 1990s Britain and the North-East in Crusaders; Jenna Bailey reveals more about the Cooperative Correspondence Club featured in Can Any Mother Help Me?; and Hanif Kureishi divulges more about mid-life crisis and his new novel, Something To Tell You.

Richard T. Kelly's Crusaders was acclaimed as one of 2008's best debut novels. A contemporary parable, it shifts between past and present, its backdrop the thorny history of Labour and industry in the North-East, as a new shade - New Labour - steals across the landscape. The novel's multiple storylines mesh superbly into a compelling narrative, driven by sharp social observation, darkly desperate...

In 1935, a young mother wrote a letter to a magazine, asking readers for help. She was lonely and frustrated, stuck at home with two children, unable to express her thoughts and ideas. The letter struck a chord with women all over the country and someone suggested they start a private magazine. And so the Cooperative Correspondence Club, or CCC, was born ... In this interview recorded in February...

Hanif Kureishi, author of The Buddha of Suburbia and The Black Album, discusses mid-life crisis and his 2008 novel, Something to Tell You. The novel takes the reader inside the life and mind of Jamal, a fifty-something psychoanalyst, who finds people from his student days in the 1970s returning to haunt him in unsettling ways.

Recorded in September 2007 on a rare visit to Faber and Faber's London offices, Orhan Pamuk discusses Other Colours, a collection of essays and reflections on life, art, books and politics. It was Pamuk's first publication following the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006.

In this extended interview the Forward Prize-winning poet talks us through his new collection Night. With interviewer George Miller he discusses how landing on his head as a boy turned him into a poet, how he unexpectedly became a war poet and why he is so fascinated by hares. He also reads a number of the book's poems.

Award-winning poet Jo Shapcott discusses her new collection 'Of Mutability' as well as some of her earlier work. The interview is interspersed with a selection of readings. We spoke to Jo in Summer 2010 and since then 'Of Mutability' has gone on to win the prestigious Costa Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for Best Collection at the 2010 Forward Poetry Prizes.

German-born poet and translator Michael Hofmann is here in conversation with George Miller. Hofmann reads from his work and reflects on his relationship with his father, the novelist Gert Hofmann.

In this extended interview, Australian poet Emma Jones discusses her debut collection 'The Striped World'. She discusses the origins of her writing as well as its themes and ideas, and reads extracts from her poems.

A spoken word short story by Willy Vlautin, frontman of the band Richmond Fontaine, and author of the novels Lean on Pete, Northline and The Motel Life. The story features characters from Lean on Pete, and music by Richmond Fontaine.